CONFERENCE I LECTURE

FRENCH PATTERNS IN WESTERN CANADIAN LANDSCAPES

RON WILLIAMS is a professor' at the Ecole >RoN WILLIAMS d'ar·chitectur·e de paysage of the University of

Montr·eal, of which he was the dir'ector' for two mandates. Through his office Williams, Asselin,

Ackaoui et associes [WAA), he has realized many well-known landscape ar'chitecture and urban any scholars have explored the design pmjects. A Fellow of CSI_A and RAIC, Mrich variety of settlement patterns he is currently writing a book on the history of brought to the Canadian Prairies by Euro­ pean immigrants in the late nineteenth landscape architecture in . and early twentieth centuries, including such unique features as the Mennonite "street village" and Ukrainian church and cemetery compositions. But the first wave of physical impressions on the land in the Canadian West, following those implanted everywhere by the First Nations, was essentially French, transplanted from New France. Just as Virginia provided the pattern for Texas, according to American landscape scholar J. B. Jackson, or New England for the American Middle West, traditions established a first tem­ plate for the towns and rural areas of the western provinces of Canada.

THE QUEBEC TRADITION

To trace that influence, let us first recall some of the familiar agricultural and com­ munity patterns of Quebec, after which we will explore some of the ways in which those patterns influenced the early land­ scape development of the West.

Most obvious is the relation between navigable rivers and agricultural patterns in New France. During the first two centu­ ries after its establishment, travel in New France relied on its excellent network of major waterways, principally the St. Law­ rence and its great tributaries, including the Richelieu, the Chaudiere, the Saint­ Maurice, and the Ottawa, and their many branches. Farms and villages were laid out along that ready-made transportation system. The French authorities distributed large blocks of land along the rivers to FIG. 1. OTTAWA RIVER AND LO NG- LOT FARM S. AIR VIEW I RON WILLI AMS

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a third approach is used: the church- like every building in town- faces straight out onto the Saint-Maurice River, the essential ligne de force of the whole region .

In addition to its relationship to the larger landscape, the church is usually carefully related to smaller man-made landscapes as well. Those include the churchyard FIG. 4. GRANDE-PILES, CEMETERY. IRON WILLIAMS and especially the cemetery, which, in Quebec's vernacular tradition, is formal and symmetrical, enclosed by symbolic evergreen trees. Gravestones are orga­ nized in rows perpendicular to a central axis dominated by the cross, which rises physically and metaphorically above all.. _ even death. The church and cemetery are usually components of a larger composi­ tion: an intricate complex of buildings and enclosed spaces, which is either the noyau

FIG. 3. GRANDE-PILE S, TOWN AND CHURCH, ST. MAURICE RI VER, FIG. 5. JARDIN DES SULPI CIENS, MONTREAL. IPETER JACOBS villageois of a town or a self-contained QUEBEC. IRON WILLIAMS institution such as a hospital, college, or convent. The private gardens of such institutions are often beautiful and wel­ seigneurs, who recruited colonists or cen­ drier flat land for grains, rough pasture coming places- and surprisingly practi­ sitaires, and assigned to each of them a and woodlot in less fertile, stony soils at cal. Some, like those of the monastere long, linear farm laid out perpendicular to higher elevations. des Ursulines in Quebec City, may be the waterway, the sole means of access . among the oldest gardens of their tradi­ As the system became successful, the first This line of settlement becomes a village tion in the world. All include spaces that row of farms along the rivers filled up;